This article focuses on the life of medical doctor Kōzō Andō (安藤公三) and his family as Japanese citizens in the British Empire, medical practitioners within inter-imperial biomedical frameworks and as intermediaries of Japanese imperialism during the Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia in World War II. The Andō family came to settle on the Malay peninsula in the late nineteenth century which was under the control of the British but still part of Japan’s nan’yō imaginary. Both Kōzō Andō and his younger brother Jun’ichiro (安藤純一郎) were trained as medical doctors at the King Edward VII Medical College in Singapore, one of the well-regarded training institutions for medicine in the British Empire and Southeast Asia at the time. When Japan invaded Malaya, Kōzō Andō was made Chief Medical Officer of Syonan (Singapore), a position which he held until his retirement and return to Japan in 1943. The life of Kōzō Andō points to his ambiguous situation in Malaya under British and Japanese empires due to his positionality as Japanese, as part of a larger Asian racial category in Malaya, and as a medical doctor in an inter-imperial setting.
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In 1918 a brief article appeared in a weekly Japanese-language magazine published in Singapore entitled The South Seas and the Japanese about two Japanese doctors and their father:
In the South Seas, there are two doctors named Mr. Andō, one of them is called Kōzō, the other one is Jun’ichiro, both of them being courteous young gentlemen. Kōzō is 33 years old, being the older brother, while Jun’ichiro is 28 years old. Their father’s name is Kōhei [公平] who is an alcohol-loving Go player having both doctors on his side, living free and easy. Perhaps he is the most carefree person in the South Seas. (Anon Citation1918: 14)
This playful characterization of an older Japanese man and his two sons goes on to reveal that the place in the “South Seas” where the Andōs were living was in the Straits Settlements of Penang and Singapore, part of British Malaya. The father, Kōhei (1853–1931), was born in Iyo city, in today’s Ehime Prefecture on Shikoku Island, Japan. The article describes Kōhei as “having ambitions to travel” whereby he moved to Nagasaki where Kōzō was born in 1885. The family then traveled to Hong Kong where Jun’ichiro was born in 1890 before moving to Singapore. At the time the article was published, the brothers worked in Singapore and Penang, crown colonies of the British Empire and part of Malaya.
